Cliffs of Dover, a Year Later

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

David, you once mentioned you worked in a hospital. If the software there is never optimized, I seriously hope I never end up where you work buddy.

That depends on your definition of "optimized". If it means "the software isn't going to kill you", then it's optimized. If it means "is working as efficiently as possible", then it isn't optimized.

BTW, I don't work in a hospital.

[GraveyardJimmy]

Originally Posted by Sutts

Now you're embarrassing yourself mate, better stop before you make it any worse.

I admit there's a lot of work by graphic artists and 3D modellers in those games but in the end it's just a bunch of complex animations and scripted conversations with triggers, strung together with a bit of action to keep things interesting. Do you really believe they've modelled gun ballistics in those games? It's all smoke and mirrors.

Nowhere near the complexity of a flight sim which simulates the world and complex machines within it which interact in 3 dimensional space.

Not only this, but it doesn't matter at all that there is a huge world. The world is not rendered all at the same time and there are view distance sliders for all objects that get rendered. The world is all created beforehand and they had 8 people just for dungeon design- not textures, art assets, graphics engine etc. With Cod there is haze, but there is far more being rendered (eg. buildings- each one is a 3d model, unlike skyrim).

The studio is so big they have their own (not the buildings) gym and a massive kitchen. As you can see from development pictures and updates, the CoD team barely fill a room. You cant compare the two really.

[addman]

I'm sorry to say, adonys but Skyrim for example is not a good example. Physics are off, there is no advanced a.i, everything you see is either 100% scripted or just randomly generated. For example, how often do you see any NPC characters in that game, go in to town, buy some materials for armor/sword and then goes to the blacksmith and make him/herself an armor or sword and after that proceeds to the pub and asks someone for a quest?
That's right, it never happens in that game. NPC's are just standing around doing nothing or walking around doing nothing, spitting out the same dialog over and over and over again. There is barely any a.i at all in that game methinks, either NPC's are attacking you or attacking someone/thing else, that's Doom level a.i right there.

Yes, sometimes when you are outside of a town you may see some random stuff happening, a group of bandits fighting a dragon or something but that's all it is, randomly generated stuff that a computer from the 90's can handle. I love Skyrim, I have it on Steam (Mafia 2 also) but it's grossly overrated, it has pretty graphics, cool dragons, interesting story, lovely music etc. but an advancement in videogames it is not IMO.

[CaptainDoggles]

Originally Posted by Sutts

+1

Every second you fly your plane there are processes calculated affecting your plane ...............and all the other objects visible for miles around, not just a street.

Don't get fooled. Flight sims are extraordinarily complex, but that isn't to say other games/programs are not as complex. MMO's for example are also extremely complex. The complexity merely lies in different areas. Instead of looking up performance data from an array or idealized formula (consumer flight sim) it might be handling thousands of database transactions per second (MMORPG) or rendering hundreds of sprites with as little latency as possible (multiplayer FPS).

Programming a 3D game is never trivial.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by addman

For example, how often do you see any NPC characters in that game, go in to town, buy some materials for armor/sword and then goes to the blacksmith and make him/herself an armor or sword and after that proceeds to the pub and asks someone for a quest?

Hey! Try walking around like that all day if you have taken an arrow to the knee yourself!

[adonys]

Originally Posted by Sutts

+1

Every second you fly your plane there are processes calculated affecting your plane ...............and all the other objects visible for miles around, not just a street.

aaa.. what objects visible for miles around? You're not talking about IL2Cod, are you? because, actually in IL2CoD those objects you are mentioning are NOT there, unless you are within a mile or so from them. Go at 3k, and look down from above those huge radar antenas for example.. and.. you won't see them!

In AC you can climb atop of the highest building from a town, and see EVERYTHING around you, the whole damn town.

And about processing.. again you don't know what IL2 is really processing. Just load the map, and don't spawn any actor, spawn a plane, destroy it then just walk with the free camera, and write down your FPS.

Then do the same from your airplane, but without any cockpit (to not have the FPS influenced by rendering the cockpit), and write down FPS again. Spawn an AI in your flight, and fly with him, and again note the FPS with your flight mate in view, and not in view.

Then compare them all, and you might be surprised

A lot of the "complex" calculation of which you are talking about in IL2, are not actually there. many actually happen only when triggered (like when pressing the fire button, or when bullets are actually hitting something).

And don't mistake a big number of computations needed to be done with a complex computation system. those are different things.

I think you would understand better all of this if you try to find out a game engine development book, and try to read it.

As it is, you really don't know what's this about, not even the ones of you which are programmers, but never worked as game programmers.

[Walrus1]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

David, you once mentioned you worked in a hospital. If the software there is never optimized, I seriously hope I never end up where you work buddy.

LOL. I work in a hospital. The software that we use is by far the worst, dysfunctional, bug filled, poorly performing archaic garbage I have ever used in any type of application. It is obviously far, far from optimized and the update schedule is glacial. And it is used in hundreds (thousands?) of hospitals across the USA.

McKesson

[addman]

Originally Posted by mazex

Hey! Try walking around like that all day if you have taken an arrow to the knee yourself!

Shoot me, please do it.

[Dano]

Heh, Skyrim for the PS3 is still broken if you're looking for comparisons and yes, the developers are avoiding talking about it and no, they've not apologised at all

[Jatta Raso]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

David, you once mentioned you worked in a hospital. If the software there is never optimized, I seriously hope I never end up where you work buddy.

roftl